


in the wilderness life becomes

by lymricks



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, shameless Christmas fluff, with some Heavy History Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 05:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17136278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: Back in Hawkins for a winter break, Steve and Billy remember what it was like and learn about what it could be.Or, three old memories of Hawkins and one new one.





	in the wilderness life becomes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myriophyllous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myriophyllous/gifts).



Keep it, treasure this as you would  
if you were lost, needing direction,  
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;  
and in the corner of your drawer,  
tucked away like a cabin or hogan  
in dense trees, come knocking,  
and I will answer, give you directions,  
and let you warm yourself by this fire,  
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

I love you

-Jimmy Santiago Baca

They meet in a cafe at the agreed upon time, even though Steve gets there twenty minutes early because he’s always like that, these days.

Outside, the late December sun is giving up the ghost. Steve can’t believe it’s the early afternoon and things are already getting this dark. It’s nearly the shortest day of the year, he remembers, which explains it. Steve’s never been all that good with explanations.

He’s sat at a table in the window, his chin on his palm, a book that he isn’t reading open to some page so that no one will bother him. He should’ve gotten iced coffee, he thinks idly. Twenty minutes in, and the un-sipped caramel flavored swirl of milk and sugar in his cup is growing cold.

He’s glad he’s staring out the window and not into his mug, though, because it means he gets to watch Billy walk up.

His curls are loose around his face, but they look _good_. He spent time on them for this. For Steve. Warmth crawls unbidden up Steve’s spine, nestles in the space between his ribs. He drops his palm from his chin to curl it around his cooling mug, instead, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Billy, whose shoulders are hunched a little in the cold, who is as golden in this last gasp of afternoon sun as he is stretched out on a beach in the summer.

Steve marvels at all the ways he knows his best friend.

He marvels at all the ways he still pretends--

Well, everyone has that story to tell, he thinks. His is nothing special.

“What the _fuck_ , it’s _freezing_ outside,” is how Billy greets him. He’s too loud in this space, this quiet little cafe. He drops his bag and it _thumps_. People look up to stare at him, to glare. When Billy bares his teeth in one of those sharp smiles he wields so readily, they all look back to what they were doing.

It’s nearly Christmas time. The cafe has lights up in the windows. It’s a warm feeling, the lights and the fogged glass around them, but when Billy’s finally settled in his seat, that’s the real warmth.

“Hi, Billy,” Steve says.

“Hi, asshole,” Billy greets, and then he’s knocking Steve’s hand away from the mug and taking it for himself. He takes a sip and grimaces. “Okay, that’s fucking _cold_. How long have you been here?” Billy asks, but he doesn’t wait to hear Steve’s answer.

The chair scrapes when Billy shoves it back and he all but stomps up to the counter. No one says anything. No one does anything. The memory of Billy’s smile is usually enough to keep people from trying his patience a second time. 

Steve waits patiently, something he does only for Billy, and stares back out the window. It’s a quiet afternoon, slow, still. People are back in town for the holidays, but not yet urgent about unpurchased gifts.

“When,” Billy says, and Steve jumps, because he hadn’t heard his approach, “Did Hawkins get a fucking _cafe_. I know like, hipsters in New York who would love it here.”

The image is still weird: Billy in New York, except it makes a lot of sense, too, but it’s weird in a way that makes Steve want to roll his shoulders, and that’s probably why he’s never gone to visit even though Billy texts him like, three times a week about places he would love.

“Like, six months ago?” Steve offers.

“Shit, has it really been six months?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Well, how’s the--y’know. Classes? Je _sus_ , they could not pay me _enough_ \--”

“It’s good work,” Steve protests, hiding a smile behind the fresh mug of coffee that Billy brought him. It’s just fucking right. Steve loves Billy so much.

And isn’t that just the _problem_ , though?

“Sure, if you like _snot_ and _vomit_ and _tears_ \--”

“I’m used to it,” Steve says, because Billy walked right into that one, “I’ve been drinking with you for _years_ now, so--”

“Wow, cold, that’s _cold_ , Harrington. I am way more fun than a bunch of pre-schoolers.”

Steve pretends he’s thinking about it, “Man, I don’t know. They’re _really_ cute.”

Billy _sticks his fingers in Steve’s drink_ and then flicks it at him.

They get kicked out, after that, but it’s mostly because Steve tosses his notebook at Billy’s face, totally misses, and knocks over the coffee of a nasty looking old man three tables over. His muted, fumbling apology does nothing for it, so they both shoulder their backpacks and step back out into the snow.

Hawkins, Steve thinks, has always had such a powerful interest in being something that it’s not. The cafe is cute and the Christmas lights strung up on the lampposts as he and Billy walks through the center of town, past the library and the arcade, toward the diner, are cute, too, but it doesn’t hide the cracked sidewalks or the bitter Indiana cold. There’s still long, torn parts of two chain link fences they pass, and cracked windows from the last time the monsters came through.

Steve slows, first, because they’re going to walk by the shipyard alley, which has always been called that because kids in the town _way back when_ thought it looked like a place where pirates would meet, nevermind they’re landlocked, here. Nevermind that a lot of those kids never left Hawkins, never saw a ship, they just raised their families here and called it a day.

Steve’s going to leave Hawkins, he _is_ , it’s just happening a little bit slowly, kind of like he walks, because he slows to a crawl as he stares down the old alley. It ends in a solid brick wall. It’s dotted with dumpsters. It’s a regular fucking alley, except for the long trail of slices in the brick, higher than any kid could do.

Steve can remember the sound the demogorgon’s claws made as it dragged them over that brick. In his head, it sounds like the screech of metal being sliced, of sparks flying, although he’s sure that isn’t accurate.

Steve can see, so plainly, himself at the end of that alley. Billy is there too, but he loses his grip on Steve and slumps down the bricks, lands on the ground in a heap and groans. It’s his blood, the trail of it, that the demo had followed. He’s lost of a lot of it and Steve can’t carry him. Even if he could, he’s not sure he’d be fast enough even on his own to get away.

He can feel Billy’s fingers curl around his ankle. He can feel Billy’s thumb rubbing at the nub of bone, here Billy say, “Harrington, you’ve gotta go.”

On that night, the last night the monsters came through, Steve had been so ready to die in this alley. Now, Billy’s hand curls around the back of his neck and squeezes, not unlike he’d done to his ankle all those years ago, now. “Harrington, man,” Billy says, squeezing. “Where’d you go?”

Steve snorts and shakes the memory off. “You act like you don’t know,” he says. 

Billy shrugs. Steve shrugs back. 

They start walking again, dragging their feet a little bit as they do. “I wish it would snow,” Steve says, voice quiet because he’s still lost in that memory and still trapped in that alley, Billy’s hand on his ankle, Billy’s blood on his hands and smeared down his shirt, smeared down that alley, smeared everywhere.

“You and El both,” Billy says. “She keeps telling me how much she wants a snow day. You think she knows that she’s on vacation from school?”

Steve laughs. “When do you pick her up?”

“Her flight lands late tonight,” Billy says, but he’s distracted, looking all around Hawkins around them, the cold, dirty snow, the Christmas lights, but what he’s really doing is looking in the window of every passing truck.

“Hopper finally give you your own room?” Steve asks, bumping his shoulder into Billy’s. “You’ve been staying every break for years now.”

Billy snorts. “He doesn’t call it my room, but we all know it is. I practically built it with my own two fucking hands.”

“What’d he call it?”

“Community service and time served,” Billy grumbles. “That seems like an abuse of power now that I’m not seventeen. Maybe I should call the state.”

Steve shrugs, “Building Hop’s new cabin is probably better than picking up trash somewhere,” he points out. They climb up the ramp to the diner and Billy pulls the door open and holds it for Steve. The bells above jingle when they walk in.

The same woman who’s been working there since Steve first started being old enough to “go out to eat” at _the diner_ is standing at the counter. She gives them a quick one-over before her face cracks into a smile. “Let me find you a table, hun,” she says, and she’s looking just at Billy and not at Steve.

Billy’s not looking at her at all, though. Steve follows his gaze to a booth in the corner. There’s a family sitting there, now. Young--maybe Steve went to high school with the parents, who sit opposite each other in a booth. They’ve got two little boys who look like a handful, laughing and stealing bits of fruit off each other’s plates. It’s a cute scene, the family in the diner, lit up by Christmas lights in the background, but— 

But Steve knows that’s not what Billy’s seeing.

Billy is seeing himself at seventeen, the first time they talked about _it_. Steve can see him, too. Hunched over with bloody knuckles from fighting back, a bloody nose, a split lip, a black eye so fucking ugly Steve almost can’t look at him. Billy’s clutching a cup of black coffee and his fingers shake, leave uneven smears of blood on white porcelain. He’s crying, although neither of them will call it that, mostly because it’d be hard to tell, with his swollen eye and bruised cheek and all the blood distracting them both.

Billy’s shoulders shake like he’s crying, though. Steve sucks in a sharp breath as he sits across the table from him. He’d been there because it’s late, because he fought with his dad about college again, because he can’t sleep and the diner is the only place in town open for an eighteen year old to drown his sorrows on a school night.

He hadn’t expected Billy to slide in the booth looking like that, shaking like that, _angry_ like that. Steve had sat with him for a while before he’d said he was going to the bathroom. He’d called Hop. Steve had fought enough monsters by that crisp April night to know he couldn’t do it alone.

Billy’s still staring at that booth.

“Where’d you go?” Steve asks, bumping their shoulders together when the waitress comes back. “C’mon, she got us one of the good booths, right in the window.”

They’re finishing up a meal of waffles and eggs and pancakes and sausage and oatmeal and so many cups of coffee the waitress just left them the pot when Billy waves his fork at the window. Steve, a grown up now--sort of, by some standards--is staring down at the last quarter of a waffle on his plate and telling himself he’s man enough to eat it. Billy keeps kind of waving his fork.

“Use your words,” Steve says, squinting at the waffle.

“Snowing,” Billy manages, his mouth obviously full.

Steve looks up in surprise. Billy’s right, though. On top of the dirty, Hawkins slush is a much prettier snow, now. It’s falling from the sky in big, fat flakes. “Gonna be tough for you to pick up El in the Camaro,” Steve points out.

“Thank god my best friend has some overpriced bullshit with snow tires,” Billy fires back without missing a beat.

Steve groans, but he doesn’t have to say yes. They both know he’s going to do it.

It’s how they find themselves a few hours later on the road to the airport. There’s no other cars out, which Steve thinks is weird, is good, is kind of nice. Billy doesn’t let him drive, of course, so Steve’s curled up in the passenger’s seat, fiddling with the radio like Billy’s going to let him pick something and not insist on whatever he wants.

_Leaving Hawkins_ the sign says, and Steve remembers the last time they did that together, how Steve had spent months sure it was California, how they’d loaded up Steve’s new, big car--a graduation present from his parents--with everything Billy had managed to collect those last few months he lived with Hopper, how Billy had put them on the road going the wrong way, and they’d driven east and east and east and _east_ until they hit Boston, because Billy wanted to try the chowder and see a Red Sox game, and then finally they made it to New York, and Billy started college, and Steve drove back alone. 

He’d never been sad about that, really, driving back alone. Once Steve had started liking Billy, he’d spent a lot of time hoping that he’d make it out of Hawkins alive. 

Billy looks over at him, “Where’d you go?” he asks, the phrase that had shaken them both out of years of nightmares and flashbacks and supermarket run ins with dads, the phrase that has shaped so much of their friendship.

Steve shrugs and for an instant they look at each other, then the car feels weird, and they slide off the road. 

Forty-five minutes later, they’re sitting together in the back seat under a blanket that Steve’s mom has always insisted he needed to keep in his car. They’re close enough to Hawkins they could walk back into town, but not this late at night and not in the dark. Steve can’t, no matter how much Billy cajoles and rolls his eyes. Steve can’t walk back through all that darkness and he can’t wait in the car alone, so Billy agrees that they’ll go in the morning.

Steve’s got his side smushed up against Billy’s because it’s warmer like that. “At least El will know what happened,” he says, “When no one picks her up. I bet she calls Hopper. We won’t even have to wait the whole night.”

“I’m getting you a refund on those fucking piece of shit snow tires,” Billy snaps, pinching the bridge of his nose and tipping his head back. Once, Steve had thought that Billy looked a lot like Neil, now he mostly thinks he looks like Hopper.

Nature vs nurture, or something, maybe. “Sorry,” Steve says quietly.

Billy heaves a sigh. “Don’t be,” he mutters, “I get it, all right? Jesus. It’s _dark_ ,” and Steve agrees, so he tips his whole body into Billy’s.

They don’t really _cuddle_ , or hug, or touch much beyond bumped shoulders and knees and brushing hands. Billy craves touch in a way that has always surprised Steve, but he never accepts it. Billy has to start it or he goes rigid, like he does now, like he’s waiting for it to hurt.

Steve smiles, a little. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey,” he says again, and then he’s leaning in closer. “I’m not gonna hit you, asshole.”

“I know that, christ,” Billy says, “I just don’t like it when you _cling_ , okay, Harrington?”

“Liar,” Steve says, but he jumps at a sound outside, somewhere in the woods, and looks around with wide eyes.

Billy grips the back of his neck and squeezes, “It was nothing,” he promises. “Just a normal fucking Indiana sound.”

Steve’s squished down into the seat, so he has to look up at Billy, when Billy says it. He misses the height he normally has on him. Billy’s face is shrouded in shadow, but Steve knows that there are no bruises on it. He can’t really see Billy’s eyes, but he knows they’re blue. Steve’s spent the better part of the last four years memorizing every inch of Billy, his best friend, the person who got him out of his nightmares, who he got out of a house that wanted to break him.

Steve’s loved him for a long time, is the thing.

Steve looks up into Billy’s face. He leans in. He kisses him.

It’s dry and tentative until it isn’t, until Billy’s hand is in his hair and he’s licking into Steve’s mouth, pushing Steve back so he can slide into Steve’s lap, and then it’s desperate and messy and sloppy, but so much in their _lives_ has been desperate and messy and sloppy, so neither of them mind, all that much.

When Hopper pulls over to rescue them an hour later, because El called and said they were stuck in the cold, but very warm, they’re still kissing. Hopper makes a distressed sound when he looks through the window with a flashlight. He makes Billy sit in the back of his truck the whole way to the airport.

It’s fine, Steve thinks. They have a lot of lost time to make up for.

“It’s midnight,” Hopper tells them. “Shortest day of the year. Longest night,” he’s pulling into the airport as he says it, and the lights are bright and El is waiting, back from her first semester of college, off being a real girl, and the night scares him, still, but.

There’s Christmas lights everywhere and Billy shines golden wherever he goes, and it’s been a lot of years, and maybe shit’s not so bad.

“That’s all right,” Steve says, absently, minutes after Hopper finished talking, diving in to an awkward silence.

Billy, in the back seat, snorts and leans forward. He claps a hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezes. “Where’d you go, Harrington?” he asks, and all Steve can feel is the warm pad of Billy’s thumb brushing just below his ear.

“Nowhere,” Steve says. “M’right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HOLIDAY TIME EVERYONE <3


End file.
